by Anne Rice
The three figures acted as if Simmons didn’t exist. They neither turned nor bothered answering his remarks. “Can we have the registration forms, please?” the leader asked again, skeletal hand outstretched and waiting.
“I said,” declared Cinder-Block loudly, placing one huge paw on the shoulder of the leader, “that no one lives near that old cemetery. You hear me, boy?”
Stiffly, the figure turned. Unwavering eyes focused on Simmons, as if recording his features. The scarecrow man’s features never changed.
“Are you questioning my word?” the stranger asked in a flat monotone that seemed all the more menacing because of its lack of emotion.
“Yeah, Simmons,” said Ape, who had unobtrusively made his way forward to the table. “You challenging this man’s right to register?”
“Largo?” said Simmons, with a snarl of disgust. “I should have known. You and Papa Benjamin behind this nonsense?”
The mention of Papa Benjamin’s name started voices whispering in the crowd.
“It’s voodoo,” someone said.
“The undead,” continued a second.
“Zombies,” said a third, stating out loud what everyone was thinking.
“Nonsense,” said Simmons, peering closely at the gaunt figure who stood before him. “There’s no such thing.”
“Then why the hell ain’t they breathing?” asked someone in the crowd.
It was true. The chests of all three strangers remained motionless. Not a flicker of air came from their lips. Hastily, the crowd backed away, leaving Simmons and Ape alone with the gruesome visitors.
With a shudder of revulsion, Cinder-Block pulled his hand off the dead man’s shoulder. “No way they can register here. Zombies can’t vote.”
“Says who?” Ape asked cheerfully. He had been waiting all morning for this moment. “Show me a line on the voter registration form that indicates you have to be alive to vote.”
“But—but—” the big hoodlum stammered in frustration. “That’s crazy.”
“Nope,” said Ape, “that’s politics.”
He reached out and snared one of the certificates. “Not one word on this entire document states anything about breathing. It’s not required. All these gents need do is prove they’re residents of this ward and sign their names.”
“Bullshit,” said Simmons. “I don’t believe it.”
“You have no choice,” said the third zombie. “The law is the law.”
“I remember hearing Judge Criswell say the same thing when I was a little girl and went to court with my parents,” said Myra Guinn from behind the table. Her face still pale and drawn, the elderly woman struggled to her feet.
Hesitantly, she peered closer at the speaker. A soft moan escaped her lips. “Holy Jesus—it is Judge Criswell! But he’s been dead and gone for forty years!”
“I’ll call the papers!” Simmons said. “I’ll sue!”
“Go ahead,” said Ape. “Draw all the attention you want to the election. The more publicity the better. I doubt if anyone will believe a story about zombies registering to vote. But I’ll bet they’ll be real interested in learning about a notorious drug dealer trying to take over a school board.”
Simmons gnashed his teeth in rage. A thin line of spittle trickled down his jaw. His face was so red he looked ready to explode. “I haven’t lost yet!” he yelled, shaking a huge fist beneath Ape’s nose.
“Wanna bet?” countered Ape, effortlessly brushing away the big gangster’s hand. “You ever count the number of graves in a cemetery, Simmons? There’s a lot more dead folk than there are pimps and drug dealers. Time for you to kiss your election dreams good-bye.”
As if to reinforce Ape’s statement, the door of the cafeteria swung open. There was no mistaking the smell of death and decay this time. An almost overwhelming stench filled the room as a dozen more gaunt figures crowded into the entrance.
“We’ve come to register,” announced the lead zombie. “We want to vote in the upcoming school board election.”
Howling like a madman, Cinder-Block Simmons bolted from the room. Though he hoped otherwise, Ape suspected he had not seen the last of the gangster.
5.
The weeks following the cafeteria confrontation were a disaster for Cinder-Block Simmons’s election bid. The inside favorite turned into an outside longshot. Papa Benjamin’s voodoo magic had made Simmons the laughingstock of the community. Within hours of the zombie incident, Cinder-Block was labeled as the candidate so bad that the dead had risen from their graves to vote against him.
No campaign can endure constant ridicule, especially if it is essentially true. Cinder-Block’s supporters sensed the inevitable. They vanished faster than snow in the sunshine. By the week of the election, Simmons and his goons stood on their own.
Still, the big gangster refused to concede. He continued threatening violent reprisals against anyone voting for his opponents. As the big day drew closer and closer, he began dropping hints of a mysterious surprise of his own.
Try as he might, Ape couldn’t learn a thing about Simmons’s plans. Word on the street had it that the mobster had imported some special “talents” for a showdown at the ballot booth. But nobody knew the identity of the gangsters or the skills that made them important to Simmons.
All of which worried Ape. The ordinary citizens of the school district remained cowed by Cinder-Block’s threats. The election depended on Papa Benjamin and his zombie army. Their votes would be enough to defeat Simmons no matter how many of the gangster’s cronies supported him. Cinder-Block’s only chance for success rested on his neutralizing the Silent Majority.
Papa Benjamin was also worried, but for other reasons.
“The binding spell I used to raise the dead is slipping,” he confided to Ape the night before the election. “The zombies are starting to decay. My hold over their spirits grows weaker by the hour. Once they have voted, we shall return them to their resting places before the worst occurs.”
Ape had no desire to learn what that might be. With no place to call home, the zombies had been quartered downstairs in the oum’phor for the past several weeks. Fortunately, as they required neither food nor drink nor entertainment, they were not much of a problem except for their smell. The last few days the stench of the zombies had progressed from bad to worse to indescribable. And the sight of them was enough to turn the usually unflappable Ape pale.
The sun shone brightly on election day morning. Ape thanked all the gods—voodoo, Christian, and otherwise—for the cool, brisk wind blowing in from the lake. Otherwise, walking with Papa Benjamin at the head of a column of nearly fifty zombies would have been unbearable. The undead stank like raw meat left out in the heat for too many days. Even Papa Benjamin, normally above such things, appeared slightly green as he led his charges down the street to the high school. Voting was conducted in the gym of the same building where registration had taken place.
“Why do I feel like Gary Cooper in High Noon?” Ape asked as they neared the school. “With Cinder-Block Dalton and his gang waiting for us in ambush.”
“Hush,” Papa Benjamin said sharply. “You worry about nothing.”
A sudden shift in wind direction caused the voodoo priest to gag violently. “I will never,” he declared solemnly, his face a mask of distress, “eat meat again.”
“Seconded,” agreed Ape, his own stomach churning. He wrenched open the door to the gym, almost pulling it off the hinges. “Let’s get inside and vote. Then we can return these guys where they belong.”
Unfortunately, things were not as easy as that. Cinder-Block Simmons had been waiting inside, and standing by him were a dozen bulky figures with skin the color of old gray chalk.
“About time you arrived,” said Simmons, sounding a bit relieved. “My friends here don’t like to be kept waiting.”
As if following some carefully rehearsed script, the men clustered around the gangster spread out. Their massive bodies formed a solid line of flesh dividing th
e gym into two parts. Beyond them was the voting booth and two very distressed looking election judges.
“Get out of the way, Simmons,” Ape growled. “You and your goons can’t stop us from casting our ballots. It’s against the law.”
“We have no intention of breaking the law,” declared Cinder-Block smugly. “My buddy, Rollo, and his comrades only want what is rightfully theirs. They’ve come for lunch.”
“Been waitin’ all morning,” added the gray-faced individual closest to Simmons. A small dribble of saliva trickled down his jaw. “Worth it though. They smell … delicious.”
Incredulous, Ape stared at the brutish figures crowding closer. Up close, there was no mistaking them for humans—not with their sloped foreheads, beady red eyes, slablike features, and huge, flat teeth the size of quarters.
“They’re ghouls,” Ape whispered, shuddering with revulsion.
“I found them working at the morgue,” said Simmons, folding his arms across his chest. The gangster’s voice purred with satisfaction. “They jumped at the chance to meet your associates.”
Eagerly, one of the nearest ghouls reached out and grabbed one of the zombies by an arm. “Fresh,” the gray creature declared. “And plenty meaty.”
The zombie moaned, the first independent sound Ape had ever heard the undead make. It was a horrifying noise, and it set his nerves jangling.
“You can’t do this,” Ape said. “It’s illegal. It’s cannibalism.”
“Nonsense,” said Simmons, as the ghouls crept closer and closer to their intended prey. “Cannibalism implies humans eating humans. And neither ghouls nor zombies are human. We’re not breaking any law.”
“The law is the law,” intoned Judge Criswell, solemnly from somewhere in the crowd of the undead.
“You’re violating the zombies’ civil rights by not allowing them to vote,” Ape said desperately.
“No more so than you denying my friends the right to eat the food of their choice,” said Simmons.
“Enough talk,” said Rollo, seizing a zombie by the shoulders. “Time to eat!”
“This is unconstitutional!” bellowed Ape. Pandemonium erupted all around him as hungry ghouls grabbed the nearest zombie and started tearing them apart. “You can’t devour voters. It’s un-American!”
“Try and stop them!” Cinder-Block Simmons shouted back. The gym was filled with the harsh growling of the ghouls and the moaning of the defenseless zombies. “All they need is some salt and pepper!”
Ape flinched, Simmons’s words hitting him like a hammer. A bit of occult information once told to him by a friend flashed through his mind. All was not lost. There was still a chance to stop the rampaging ghouls.
With a roar, Ape smashed his way free from the struggling bodies around him. For an instant, he caught a glimpse of a distraught Papa Benjamin, squeezed up against the bleachers by the horde. There was no time for a rescue. Everything depended on his making it to the cafeteria as soon as possible.
It took Ape less than a minute to blunder through the half-dozen doors that led from the gym to the eatery. Another thirty seconds passed before he located the half-dozen items he needed. And then, while he muttered a lone prayer to the gods of trivia, another minute passed as he staggered back to the scene of the crime.
The zombies, evidently obeying the commands of Papa Benjamin, were fighting back. They had formed a circle around the voodoo priest, facing outward much like a wagon train besieged by Indians. Using their arms and legs like clubs, the zombies fought with a grim, unyielding energy. But they were no match for their monstrous attackers.
Howling like wolves, the ghouls pulled one after another of the undead from the steadily shrinking circle. Each victim suffered the same fate, as the ghouls mercilessly ripped it to shreds and devoured the pieces. Already, the gym resembled some mad charnel house, with broken bones and skeletal remains littered across the floor.
Running at breakneck speed, Ape skidded to a halt less than a dozen feet from the battle. No one noticed his approach—not until it was too late.
“Try a taste of this!” Ape yelled. He flung a filled saltshaker, minus the cap, into the air over the monsters. The glass container tumbled around and around, unleashing its contents. Instantly, Ape followed it with another, and yet another. Like fine snow, the white grains fell onto zombies and ghouls alike.
Devourers of the dead, ghouls were by definition creatures of corruption and decay. Salt, the first and most powerful preservative, was anathema to their existence. Its slightest touch burned their skin like acid.
The ghouls shrieked in incredible pain. Huge red spots appeared all over their faces and any other exposed skin. Their flesh sizzled like bacon frying. Screaming, the monsters stampeded en masse from the gym. In their mad rush, they smashed the doors to bits.
Then one of the zombies screamed, “Salt!” Its face twisted with emotion. “I am not alive. I am a dead man!”
“Dead,” said another, and then a dozen others. “We are dead men.”
As if controlled by one mind, those zombies still able to move turned and headed for the exit. “Dead men,” they continued to mutter as they marched forward.
Ape grimaced in mental pain. The taste or even touch of food makes zombies immediately aware that they are dead bodies not possessing a soul, he remembered then. No longer controllable, they return to the graves from which they have risen.
The zombies, however, never made it to the door. Once the salt broke Papa Benjamin’s binding spell, dissolution set in. Weeks of exposure to the air and sun took its toll in seconds. Before the undead could take more than a few steps, they collapsed into seething, bubbling pools of stinking flesh and rotted bone.
Shaking his head in dismay, Papa Benjamin wandered over to a befuddled Ape. “A disgusting sight,” said the voodoo priest, “but at least we won.”
“We won?” said Ape, not sure he heard correctly. “What do you mean?”
“After the goings-on here this morning,” replied Papa Benjamin, “I doubt if anyone else will dare vote here today. Which leaves the two of us and Mr. Simmons,” who was only now rising unsteadily to his feet in the far corner of the gym. “The only eligible electors.”
“And,” continued Ape, realizing the truth, “since two votes beats one vote, our friend Cinder-Block is defeated at the polls.”
“A decisive loss,” said Papa Benjamin, “by a two-to-one margin. The Silent Majority has spoken. Justice is served. The Voodoo Mysteries will be pleased.”
“Politics and voodoo,” Ape declared, grinning. “Talk about a strange mix. Though, considering the role the dead played in this election, maybe not. When you think about it, there’s not that much difference between the two. Not much difference at all.”
THE DEAD SPEAKETH NOT, THEY JUST GRUNT NOW AND THEN
LIONEL FENN
TRAVELERS in commercial airliners flying over the West Indies, those glittering emeralds floating so serenely in a sapphire sea, often wonder what it would be like to visit down there, in that paradise they envy without knowing why. They can see, from their seats so high in the azure sky, thick-forested mountains and verdant tropical jungles, white beaches and dark cliffs, sparkling lagoons and tiny gaps on the coasts where the jungle has been driven back to make way for quaint fishing villages and small towns, thriving cities and bustling ports.
And when the islands fade from sight, those travelers sigh and shake their heads and know that wherever they are going will be nothing like where they’d just been.
They’re right.
Especially about the beds, even though they weren’t even thinking about them. But if they had been thinking about them, they probably would have imagined a large airy room painted a soft white, with a large brass bed exotically canopied with mosquito netting, the room opening through tall French doors onto a second-story balcony that overlooks a broad expanse of well-kept lawn smothered with tropical shrubs and tropical flowers. They would have imagined a gentle tropical breeze sifting
gently through the tropical trees and into the room to keep the sleeper cool as he dreams of dusky tropical maidens and hard-muscled tropical men and tropical things sleepers never dream about until they’re in the tropics.
One sleeper, however, was completely unaware of those travelers flying so high overhead and wondering dreamily about all that tropical stuff down there, and he wasn’t dreaming about exotic and dusky tropical maidens.
He tried, God knows, but he couldn’t stop from dreaming about a mysterious telephone.
It wasn’t pleasant.
Especially since he wasn’t in the West Indies, either.
No, what disturbed this solitary restless dreamer from shores so far away from where he couldn’t sleep was the reason he had flown to New Jersey in the first place: a long-distance call to his hotel suite in Edinburgh, from which, had everything gone according to plan, he would have continued on to his baronial estate on an unnamed Hebrides isle for what he unselfishly believed was a well-earned vacation.
But the telephone rang just as he’d finished packing:
“Your Lordship, how the bloody hell are you?”
“Sir Ronald?”
“None other, m’lad, none other.”
“My God, Kenilworth, it’s good to hear your voice! How long has it been? Three or four years?”
“I don’t remember, to tell the truth, but there’s no time for chitchat, I’m afraid. I wouldn’t be calling you on such short notice, you know, but … but damn it all, I need your help, Your Lordship.”
“Name it, old friend.”
“You must come over at once.”
“I can’t. I’m going home for a rest. I’ve been working my—”
“Your Lordship, I’m in dire trouble.”
“But, Ron, can’t your sons—”
“Worthless, the both of them. All they care about is my money, you know that. They don’t give a damn about the work, the tradition, the people, the history of this place. They don’t care about corn, about the ears, the sheaths, the kernels, the sound the west wind makes when—oh, never mind, don’t get me started. The point is, you see … I must be blunt, there’s no other way—someone in this house is trying to kill me.”